um, I think you are missing the point. Nobody wants to do business with Russia until they get their shit sorted. It's got nothing to do with whether they are allowed to do business with Russia.
And if you think the sanctions aren't working, then what's your beef?
pfft. we've seen worse. And the lesson? Don't do any business with Russia.
Keep going, Black Knight...
To some extent, the crisis is a blowback from European sanctions that were intended to punish Moscow for its invasion of Ukraine. The pain has undermined confidence at European companies and their ability to plan.
What is interesting here in Germany is the pattern of dissension. You get a number of academics and Russian apologists still punching above their weight in public discussion and keep plugging the Kremlin's line, like this plonker. But the real hands-on business people know exactly what the situation is. The loss of Russian and Ukrainian markets has been factored into budgets for the coming year. The more pressing issue is supply chain issues which are hard to predict.
The actual cost of energy OTOH is something you can factor into your pricing. Some succeed better than others. The key point though is that all of these distortions are temporary until the market settles back into place with new parameters. Russia has basically cooked its goose.
Oil & gas dependency on Russia is never going to happen again.
And the lesson? Don't do any business with Russia.
Keep going, Black Knight...
To some extent, the crisis is a blowback from European sanctions that were intended to punish Moscow for its invasion of Ukraine. The pain has undermined confidence at European companies and their ability to plan. (...)
Eschenbach Porcelain survived Germanyâs transition from communism to capitalism after 1989. But when its energy contracts run out at the end of this year, the company will face annual energy bills of 5.5 million euros, or roughly six times what it is paying now, said Rolf Frowein, its director.â
That would mean we have to more than double our prices, and nobody will pay that for our cups and plates,â he said. Eschenbach, a 130-year-old company in the eastern state of Thuringia, is in talks with local politicians about a potential solution. It is one of dozens of small and midsize firms in Germany fearing they will have to close for good.
Makers of metal, paper, fertilizer and other products that depend on gas and electricity to transform raw materials into products from car doors to cardboard boxes have announced belt-tightening. Half of Europe’s aluminum and zinc production has been taken offline, according to Eurometaux, Europe’s metals trade association.
Among them is Arcelor Mittal, Europe’s largest steel maker, which is idling blast furnaces in Germany. Alcoa, a global aluminum products producer, is cutting a third of production at its smelter in Norway. In the Netherlands, Nyrstar, the world’s biggest zinc producer, is pausing output until further notice.
Even toilet paper is not immune: In Germany, Hakle, one of the largest manufacturers, announced that it had tumbled into insolvency because of a “historic energy crisis.”
pfft. we've seen worse.
And the lesson? Don't do any business with Russia.
Makers of metal, paper, fertilizer and other products that depend on gas and electricity to transform raw materials into products from car doors to cardboard boxes have announced belt-tightening. Half of Europeâs aluminum and zinc production has been taken offline, according to Eurometaux, Europeâs metals trade association.
Among them is Arcelor Mittal, Europeâs largest steel maker, which is idling blast furnaces in Germany. Alcoa, a global aluminum products producer, is cutting a third of production at its smelter in Norway. In the Netherlands, Nyrstar, the worldâs biggest zinc producer, is pausing output until further notice.
Even toilet paper is not immune: In Germany, Hakle, one of the largest manufacturers, announced that it had tumbled into insolvency because of a âhistoric energy crisis.â
You'd think someone that smart wouldn't be so political and only mention one part of the equation that drives up prices.
Inflation often builds up over time, and has diverse and complex reasons behind it.
Some of these are â cheap $ policies (low rates and printing $ or QE); strong demand for goods; rising costs from wars that make commodities more scarce and disrupt supply chains, or simply running out of the commodity (oil); concentration of companies (big getting bigger, Reich's point above); and reversing years of cheap labor, both domestic and international.
It's not hard to see each of these and how the contributed to our current inflation trends, which was exasperated by the pandemic and our response.
Couple of what should be fairly obvious articles on where we are now, and heading. Deglobalism â or more near shoring (not necessarily domestic production of cheap stuff like apparel and footwear) will lead to more spending, but this is the good type of investment needed to ensure a better future. Unfortunately, after decades of cheap labor and capital, the spending could lead to more s-t inflation. This and higher rates, will lead to even more debtâ¦which could strangle our ability to continue to make these needed investments.
Unlike many progressives, I worry a lot about debt. Public debt, private debt, personal debt â I donât like any of it. You could maybe chalk it up to my Midwestern upbringing or being the child of immigrant parents. I like having cash on hand, and have always been willing to pay a return price to hold it. You never know when bad times are coming.
So I was particularly interested in a paper by economists Francesco Bianchi of Johns Hopkins and Leonardo Melosi of the Chicago Fed, that made a huge stir last week in Jackson Hole. The typically low key academic title, âInflation as a Fiscal Limit,â belies the heat that it is generating in academic, policy and even financial media circles. The frightening upshot of the work is that it doesnât matter what the Federal Reserve does right now in terms of hiking rates to try and get inflation under control. If monetary policy isnât accompanied by appropriate fiscal policy (or to be more accurate, a âmutually consistent monetary and fiscal policyâ), then stagflation will be the result.
Once upon a time, many progressives were fiscally conservative. Social democrats in northern Europe have generally been very fiscally conservative. But I support your concerns.
Today's trendy, vain, narcissistic progressives seem totally divorced from the real world. They seem absolutely determined to accelerate the hegemonic decline of the USA. Once again, and contrary to Sachs and others, I am using the term hegemony as a 'good thing'.
As for de-globalization leading to more inflation... that is not necessarily the case. It depends on monetary policy and to some extent fiscal policy AS ALWAYS. Given the across the board, rock solid support for the Federal Reserve's dual mandate, it is reasonable to expect more crack-cocaine like macroeconomic fluctuations.
De-globalization driven by US Neo-Mercantilism will reduce the growth in US per capita income and wealth. Given the ongoing importance of racism in US economic and foreign policy and the propensity of American political leaders (of all stripes) to constantly mislead and lie to their citizens, I see this as inevitable.
The real tragedy is that lying about the China and its policies will not help solve extremely difficult, tough structural economic problems in the USA. It will not help lift poor and low-income Americans out of poverty.
Then there was the President Joe Biden BIG LIE called the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. Are Americans that gullible and stupid?
you can create an account and get access to a few free reports each month.
basic premise, we need to be making these critical investments in existing and new infrastructure,
but may be strangled by our massive debt from high discretionary spending and entitlements, in a new era of higher rates.
debt does matter.
Couple of what should be fairly obvious articles on where we are now, and heading. Deglobalism â or more near shoring (not necessarily domestic production of cheap stuff like apparel and footwear) will lead to more spending, but this is the good type of investment needed to ensure a better future. Unfortunately, after decades of cheap labor and capital, the spending could lead to more s-t inflation. This and higher rates, will lead to even more debtâ¦which could strangle our ability to continue to make these needed investments.
Unlike many progressives, I worry a lot about debt. Public debt, private debt, personal debt â I donât like any of it. You could maybe chalk it up to my Midwestern upbringing or being the child of immigrant parents. I like having cash on hand, and have always been willing to pay a return price to hold it. You never know when bad times are coming.
So I was particularly interested in a paper by economists Francesco Bianchi of Johns Hopkins and Leonardo Melosi of the Chicago Fed, that made a huge stir last week in Jackson Hole. The typically low key academic title, âInflation as a Fiscal Limit,â belies the heat that it is generating in academic, policy and even financial media circles. The frightening upshot of the work is that it doesnât matter what the Federal Reserve does right now in terms of hiking rates to try and get inflation under control. If monetary policy isnât accompanied by appropriate fiscal policy (or to be more accurate, a âmutually consistent monetary and fiscal policyâ), then stagflation will be the result.
Struggling to choke off the revenue that enables Russia to finance its invasion of Ukraine, and hoping to shield consumers at home from the warâs economic pain, leaders of the Group of 7 nations on Monday moved close to embracing an aggressive but untried plan to manipulate the price of oil, the largest commodity market in the world.
The plan â which would allow Russia to keep selling oil to the world but would sharply limit the price â is an acknowledgment that the embargoes the United States and allies swiftly imposed on Moscowâs lucrative energy exports have not dented Russian oil revenues. And they have driven up gasoline and other fuel prices, prompting consumer backlash in the United States and Europe. (...)
The effort to put a price cap on Russia oil is the brainchild of Janet L. Yellen, President Bidenâs Treasury secretary. The details are likely weeks or more away from being finalized, requiring intense negotiations by G7 finance ministers, private companies and leaders of countries in Latin America, Africa and elsewhere that buy Russian oil.
And there is no guarantee that the plan will come together quickly, or at all, or that it will succeed as the G7 leaders hope.
There is also a potential political downside in Europe and possibly the United States: To succeed, the plan will need to give China, India and other countries that have not joined the G7 in opposing Russiaâs invasion of Ukraine the ability to buy oil at a much lower price than America or much of Europe can.
But earlier this year, talks of lifting those sanctions and engaging more with Venezuela about oil were criticized by lawmakers.
Tennessee Rep. Mark Green (R) said âit would be outrageous to even consider buying oil from Iran or Venezuela.â
âItâs past time for us to take advantage of Americaâs abundant natural resources and become energy independentâand itâs time to cut off tyranny and totalitarianism at the knees around the globe,â Green added.
Officials said at the time in March that they had not made any decisions about importing oil from Venezuela or Saudi Arabia to fill voids of foreign oil imports.
